Poll shows more people identifying as pro-life

The abortion issue had a big week. People and the media were talking about it so much it almost felt like the 1980s. We even saw the return of those little baby feet, a popular pro-life symbol I haven't seen someone wearing for years.

First there was the scuttle at Notre Dame over the Catholic university giving an honorary degree to pro-choice President Barack Obama -- and giving some pro-life Catholics indigestion. Then there was The Poll.

What poll you ask? The Gallup Poll that found 51 percent of American adults now call themselves pro-life rather than pro-choice on the issue of abortion. Forty-two percent of respondents said they were pro-choice in the annual values survey, compared to 50 percent last year. Both men and women tilt pro-life, with 54 percent of men and 49 percent of women describing themselves as such. That compares to 39 percent and 44 percent who identify as pro-choice.

The poll made a big splash because it represents a shift: It is the first time that a majority of U.S. adults identified themselves as pro-life in the 15 years Gallup has asked the question. And the findings echoed results in a Pew Research Survey that found less support than in the past for abortion's legality in all or most cases.

As one would expect, the pro-life lobby is celebrating the Gallup finding while the pro-choice crowd is dismissing the survey's meaning -- or at least massaging it. In an Associated Press story about the survey, reporter David Crary writes that Planned Parenthood Federation of America president Cecile Richards questioned the terminology in the Gallup questions.

"The terms pro-choice and pro-life no longer define the parameters of the debate, witnessed by the fact that in the Gallup Poll, a majority of people say they are both pro-life and that abortion should be legal," Richards said. Crary wrote, "She added that most Americans share Obama's stated goal of reducing the number of unintended pregnancies." (Funny how former President George W. Bush and other pro-lifers have said that same thing about abortion for years, but now it actually means something to the pro-choice crowd. Ditto for "finding common ground" and "we all want fewer abortions.")

But back to Richards' problem with the Gallup Poll's terminology: Did the terms "pro-choice" and "pro-life" drastically change in one year's time? Not likely. And was the pro-choice crowd this dismissive of the survey's findings over the past 15 years when a majority of Americans identified as pro-choice?

At the same time, pro-lifers ought to know that calling one's self pro-life and being against legal abortion are two entirely different things. And most pro-lifers do. As Richards and others note, Americans are not at all ready to make abortion illegal. For example, only 23 percent of Americans in the Gallup Poll said abortion should be illegal in all circumstances, while only 22 percent want abortion legal under any circumstance and a majority (53 percent) says it should be legal only under certain circumstances.

This is why so many pro-life people and leaders in recent decades talk more about changing hearts and minds than laws. It's why they purchase ultra sound machines for crisis pregnancy centers instead of signs to stand outside of abortion clinics. It's why they are busy raising funds for homes to help pregnant women and urging relationship education.

But the recent responses and statements about abortion from various abortion-rights activists, including Obama, leave me wondering if any of them actually hear a word that mainstream pro-life Americans say.

A lot of us pro-lifers out there are focused on that heart-and-mind change, not changing laws. We realize that a nation of women accustomed to having abortion as an option would still seek abortion -- legal or not. You can't stuff the abortion genie back in the bottle with the election of a new president or a shift on the Supreme Court. Abortion wouldn't go away without Roe v. Wade, it would go underground.

What could get all of us to where we need to be in the abortion debate is if both sides talked less about laws and political stands and more about what abortion really is. Talk about terminology problems! So many in society call an unborn child a baby when the mom wants it and tissue when she doesn't. Every mom who has an ultrasound picture in her kid's baby book knows exactly what is going on inside the womb even in that first trimester.

A lot of people on both sides of the issue talk about finding common ground and they urge fewer unplanned pregnancies and say they want fewer abortions. But it's hard to change hearts and minds when abortion-rights activists, including Obama, refuse to be clear that abortion takes another life, even as it can save or ease the life situation for the mother.

Abortion activists and anti-abortionists should seize this moment in time to stop talking about the legality of abortion (it's always going to be legal) and start impressing upon the public just how serious it is to have an abortion.

Perhaps with the threat of illegality off the table, we could get to the inhumanity of taking human life, start changing hearts and minds and get to that business of fewer abortions.